


a promise instead of a regret

by persephassax



Series: Reunions: a ten year anniversary commemoration [1]
Category: High School Musical (Movies)
Genre: Future Fic, Growing Up, M/M, Oops, School Reunion, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 22:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6585046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephassax/pseuds/persephassax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years can feel like an eternity or the blink of an eye. Chad doesn't want to return to East High, especially not with all the expectations of him unfulfilled, but life is a path composed of missteps, accidents, and serendipity, and high school has one last twist of fate in store.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a promise instead of a regret

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from A Softer World [1224](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1224)
> 
> this is partially in honor of the 10 year anniversary of the release of HSM. because such occasions ought to be marked by self-indulgent character sketches featuring high school reunions.
> 
> i also wrote this as an exercise in continuous narrative -- no jump cuts, cross fades, or fade to black. i hope you enjoy.
> 
> i definitely didn't write this fic because my own reunion is coming up. nope.

**** Chad didn't really want to come back for his five year high school reunion. It felt a little too much like disappointment, like admitting that things hadn't gone according to plan. The University of New Mexico had been an easy expectation, but a nasty fall and a busted knee in his third semester put paid to that. Finally, after months, walking out of physical therapy left him at the door of CNM. 

Facing down the front door of East High felt both monumental and anti-climactic. Through those doors were a host of people who remembered Chad Danforth, basketball star, but at the same time, the building itself looked small. The same doors he had dreaded walking through at 7:30 AM Monday through Friday, nine months of the year, for four years of his life seemed diminished.

They were the same doors he felt liberated from as he walked out of them for the last time, when he was 18, when the world was his oyster, no one could stop him now. 

But they were just doors. Doors to a building that needed some serious repainting done, because the sad bundle of helium balloons tied to the railing was doing nothing to hide exactly how little had changed, not only in the last five, but the last nine, years.

In the hallway, the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and Chad hated the squeak of his sneakers on the linoleum, the way his footsteps echoed in the empty space. High school had never been this quiet, always with the guys, or the girls, or Troy, not even when ducking out of class, or sneaking around to foil Troy and Gabby’s romance––how could these things have felt so important?  _ This thing all things devours..., _ and Chad catches himself,  _ Maudlin, much? _

Nevertheless, he was surprised to find that the hallways still smelled the same. A faint odor of industrial cleaner, and the undefinable remnants of the cafeteria kitchen. Some thoughtless architect had put the kitchen near the central air vents, so a fog of the soggy vegetable-scent of "meatless monday" and the almost-appealing stench of ground mystery meat on Tex Mex Thursday always permeated the rest of the building

When he made it to the double doors of the cafeteria, he knew the moment of reckoning had arrived from the “Welcome Class of 2008!” banner, doing its middling best to appear cheerful and inviting, hanging over the doors.

Just through the doors, behind a folding table wearing a skirt, was sitting a blonde,  _ Mandi? Marci? something ending in 'i',  _ someone Chad hadn't thought about in years. Her face was familiar, though the specifics, like her name, were gone, seeing her at practices and on game day, jumping around in a skirt holding pompoms for all four years he was at East High, leaving barely enough of an impression to place her.

Her badge read "Millie," and Chad felt a twinge of shame for having thought something off-handedly mean about her, letting her fade more into the stereotype than she deserved given the honest enthusiasm and happiness in the smile she had directed at him.

"Chad!" she still had the inexplicable perk of someone whose primary activity involved the word  _ pep _ , "I'm so glad you're here! Grab your name badge and head on in!"

The table in front of her, at one point had had some five rows of little printed sticky name tags, running the full length of the table. But here and there, more often than not, were gaps where people had already found their names. Chad guessed he was later than everyone else. Reluctance had kept him home past the time he should have left to be "fashionably late" and he was probably plain old "late".

Chad smiled at Millie and scanned the table for his name. His face felt stiff, and he wondered what he was supposed to say to her. Finally he found his tag, between "Paul Czresenski" and "Michael Davidson," and he met Millie's eyes, and forced a bit of the old charm into his smile, tossing her a "Great to see you," as he peeled the back off his name and turned to the rest of the room.

Thankfully, the alumni association or former yearbook committee, whoever it was that organized these things, had sprung for a couple of dozen boxed wines, and now diminished cheese spread. Chad made a bee-line for the wine and hovered near the cheese while he sipped and surveyed the crowd.

Most of the people were, if not strangers to him, then nameless familiar faces. Here or there he would spot someone he remembered from this or that class; James from American History, sophomore year; Mitch who used to ask stupid, hilarious questions in Spanish 1, freshman year; Janelle from senior year English, a poetry class he thought would be easy, whose poems he would remember unexpectedly, even now. But no one he wanted to go up and talk to. No one he could think of anything to say to.

On the other side of the room he spotted Martha, another someone he'd half-forgotten about, talking to someone leaning against the wall. Brief relief and a flash of warmth ran through him, starting in his shoulders. He added a little wine to his glass, and made his way across the room towards where he had seen her standing, walking around a bunch of people who, he nearly double-taked when he realized, used to be among the stoner/skater crowd, but with the button downs and the sports jackets you almost couldn't tell. When he got to the other side of the crowd, Martha was nowhere to be seen, but a suddenly-familiar blond head leant against the wall, presumably the person whom she had been talking to.

Ryan Evans. Not someone Chad had forgotten about. Not someone he really expected to see again. Definitely someone Chad had wondered about in the years between high school and now.  _ Ryan Evans, _ Chad smiled and pressed forward.

"Is this wall taken?" Chad asked, feeling a pulse of his old sure-footedness for the first time in a long while. Ryan was holding a glass of wine, his slacks and button down both looked practically dour compared to his old flair, the former being grey and the latter a light blue, rolled up to his elbows, exposing strong corded forearms dusted with pale blond hair, top buttons undone. His face was turned away from Chad, who could see the sharp cut of his jaw, the strong line of his neck, dancer-flat clavicle, one rosy ear framed by short blond hair. He was hatless, previously unthinkable, now obvious, showing off the careful, straight part running across his scalp, accentuating the corner of his right eyebrow.

Ryan looked up, a disinterested expression on his face, but when he caught sight of Chad it flashed away, replaced by a look of shock, then a pleased smile played at his lips.

"Chad Danforth, I'll be," Ryan's voice just managed to hold a laugh at bay, "Not who I imagined would come to me looking to get in on this  _ very _ exclusive wallspace."

Ryan's hand made a circle to show off the darkened corner he had claimed, carefully hidden under the balcony and half behind another valiant little cluster of balloons. Chad made a show of looking around.

"Looks like some pretty prime real estate.”

He met Ryan's dancing eyes, pleased to realize the blue of them was still familiar.

"Private, one might even say secluded, beyond the light and the noise of the masses––hold up now, that doesn't sound like the Evanses I knew."

Ryan let a graceful shrug roll off his shoulders, " _ Plus ça change... _ I think I got my fill of the masses, actually."

A sly grin accompanied that remark, and Chad smiled back, helpless, and felt a little something loosen at the near-admission that Ryan wasn't where they all expected him to be, either; on Broadway, with his name in lights.

"My French isn't what it used to be, Evans," Chad tossed out, haughty, "Where is your sister?"

"At last, the true reason for your trip over here emerges," Ryan bemoaned, "She told me to tell anyone who asked that she had a prior engagement––in Paris."

Chad figured that from the sardonic tone, and the sharp edge of Ryan's grin, that no such Parisian engagement existed, but that the first bit of the sentence wasn't as much of a joke as he wished it was.  

“I think it's much better that Sharpay and I continue with our efforts to remain on opposite sides of the continental U.S."

Ryan laughed, his posture loosening, and he turned to face Chad a little more fully.

"What have you been up to since Juilliard, then?” Chad gives Ryan a not-so-subtle once-over, “Looking like that you have to still be dancing.”

Ryan laughed, again, “Well, I’m putting my degree to good use, certainly. I’m mostly teaching dance to a bunch of snot-nosed little brats up in Westchester.”

Chad noticed that the mirth in his blue eyes had faded a little behind his rueful grin.

“Someone has to show them what it takes,” he tried, eyebrows raised, “You never went easy on us, and I bet they could all use a little discipline in their lives.”

The mirth returned, brightening Ryan’s eyes, “Like you wouldn’t believe!”

Chad let it hang for a moment, the laughter fading into amused silence as they both sipped their wine, not really taking their eyes off each other, although Chad let his slip away to survey the crowd as he asked, “If not to live in the city, why stay in New York?”

Ryan let out a small, almost inaudible, sigh, and Chad knew he wasn’t supposed to hear it, but he was tuned to Ryan’s frequency, the boy––the  _ man _ couldn't blink without Chad feeling it, somewhere, on his skin. He worried that he’d overstepped, but Ryan’s lips parted and Chad just barely kept himself from leaning in, even as he leant his left shoulder more heavily against the wall to hear the answer.

“I couldn’t leave Sharpay all alone,” another not-happy smile accompanied the statement, not the rueful, self-deprecating one from before, this one was sad, and maybe a little bitter, “Dad is still funding her bid at fame. She’s got an apartment and a part time job, and she goes to auditions…” Another sigh.

Chad cocked his head to the side, licked his lips, and said, “Part-time job? Doing what, exactly. I need details to help me imagine the impossible.”

It had the intended effect, another laugh, exactly what he'd been looking for, and Ryan said, “As someone's receptionist! Can you believe it?”

Chad laughed, too, amused by the mental picture of Sharpay, still dressed all in pink, terrorizing men in suits waiting for appointments. He soaked up Ryan’s peals of laughter, doing his best to give them back with the breath in his lungs. He shook his head as his laughter faded to chuckles.

Ryan broke the moment of warm quiet between them, with a question of his own, "How about you? Still playing basketball?"

The soft smile on his face made Chad think he already knew the answer. But the question still made something not fully healed in his chest harden into a heavy weight. He looked down for a moment, before reminding himself to raise his head and look Ryan in the face.

"Nah," he let out on a huff of harsh amusement, "I twisted my knee really badly at the start of sophomore year. With the time needed for physical therapy, and the loss of the scholarship, I couldn't stay at UNM."

He stopped and took the last swallow of his boxed wine. He swallowed again trying to move past whatever it was that had taken up residence at the top of his throat.

Ryan stepped closer and nudged him with an elbow, head tilted to the side to try and meet Chad's eyes.

"There's an awful lot that can happen in four years. However did you manage to fill the time?"

His voice held a thread of levity that seemed to seek out the same thing Chad himself had been looking for earlier. 

He smiled, knowing that Ryan worried about letting it get too heavy, too.

"Well. I ended up at CNM,” at Ryan’s blank expression Chad laughed despite himself, “Evans! Only you wouldn’t know the acronym of the local community college!”

Ryan had the grace to blush but fired back, “‘Evans’? I thought we were past that! But we can go back, if you really want,  _ Danforth _ .”

“Oh god,” Chad replied to Ryan’s drawled use of his patronymic, “You’re right, you’re right!”

They dissolved into laughter again. But Ryan sobered first, his cheeks still flushed and his bright blue eyes running over Chad’s face, hovering over his mouth, making Chad feel self conscious about his teeth.

“So, you went to this CMN––”

“CNM.”

“That’s what I said,” Ryan waved an imperious hand at Chad, “And did what there?”

Chad took a deep breath, licked his lips and decided to tell the story from the beginning.

“Well, I didn’t go right there. Like I said, I busted my knee pretty badly. I tore both the disk and a tendon, so they had to open it up more than once to put the whole thing back together,” Ryan winced, the hand not holding his little plastic cup hovered over his own leg in sympathy.

“So that took a lot of time and money. Thankfully my mother has pretty good health insurance. The school completely shafted me,” Chad’s heart pounded again at the memory of the false sympathy and the impassive expressions on the faces of the head of athletics and the administrators whose offices he dragged himself to for weeks, leg immobilized. Only the coach had ever said anything that sounded even remotely genuine, and that was his half-eaten “never do fuckin anything.” But Chad was no longer a worthwhile investment and the bean counters at the great institution of the University of New Mexico were through with him. “So I spent a month and a half in recovery and then another six with regular physical therapy, and I still do the exercises when it starts feeling stiff.”

Ryan hummed in understanding, nodding along, and Chad figured he must have sprained or pulled something, unavoidable in any kind of athletics, at some point and was familiar with the long period of strengthening and extended warm ups that follow that kind of muscular or ligature injury.

“But we were still out a pretty good chunk of cash between copays and useless student loans, so I got a job. I couldn’t stand for long periods of time, but couldn’t walk a lot either,” Chad remembered the excruciating couple of months he spent crippled by his injury, unable to get around easily, trying to convince potential employers to take pity on an invalidated, unexceptional former basketball player with only a high school diploma to his name. He heaved a sigh, “Eventually, I managed to convince the manager at Century 14, the movie theater on Central South West, to take me on. I was sitting in his office for the third time in two months and I think he felt bad for me. Honestly, I was worried I was gonna have to call up your man Fulton and beg him to take me back at Lava Springs.”

Ryan’s cheeks were flushed, and he looked ready to say something, but Chad shook his head, partially to clear out the last few strands of bitterness that clung to his thoughts.

“Anyway, I could sit on a high stool for ticketing and directing people, and I was mobile enough to do post-movie janitorial shifts. The pay was shit, but it was pay,” Chad shrugged.

He was grateful to Mr. Richards, the theater manager. He was a rotund, sweaty guy whose life hadn’t taken him further than the top of the bottom of the food chain. Prone to power trips through arbitrary, brutally enforced standards, he fully expected Chad to worship the ground he walked on for his magnanimity in employing him. Were Chad less grateful, he would have hated the man. But his relief at finally finding a job combined with his recent brush with how awry things can go––despite the best laid plans of mice and men––left him with a lukewarm feeling towards the man; a guilty combination of gratitude and pity.

Ryan cut in, “Okay, knee surgery, movie theater job, when do we get to community college?”

The blond was turned fully to face Chad now, shoulder pressed tight to the wall, leaving half his face in shadow. For all the impatience in his words, his eyes betrayed his interest, they stayed firmly fixed on Chad’s, gleaming in the half shadow of their hideaway.

“Alright, alright. I was in a rut. I knew I didn’t want to stay at the Century, because even if the work hadn’t been mind numbingly awful, there was literally nowhere to go if I stayed there. No one was going to get promoted past full time until Richards died or maybe if they opened a new theater. But…”

Chad watched Ryan lean in, hanging on a thread.

“You found God? What?”

“I wish it was that easy! No, Shawn stopped coming to work, no one had heard from him––turns out he got arrested, but anyway––”

“He what?” Ryan asked, in shock.

Chad grinned, “You want to hear about CNM or Shawn’s misdemeanor possession charge?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before continuing.

“We hired this new guy, Mitch, who had a whole bunch of experience with fixing projectors, in addition to a bunch of years working in other theaters, so he could negotiate for better hours. He was taking classes at CNM to kill time because he’d gotten kicked out of UCLA for something he refused to tell us about.”

Ryan got a bemused, suspicious look on his face, again. But Chad kept the story locked behind his smile,  _ let him wonder _ . Mitch had said something, after a couple of drinks the staff had stashed in preparation for the aftermath of a midnight screening, about how it had been only a little bit of acid, no one had had a bad trip, and it was ridiculous that the administration had gotten their panties in a bunch over it. But his mumbling had quickly devolved into an impassioned, but incoherent critique of the blockbuster they had just staffed. When they asked him about it the next day, he said he’d blacked out and wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Chad was inclined to believe the first, but still had reservations about the second.

“So this Mitch character got you to re-enroll at CNM?”

Chad shook his head, his curls shifting against his ears, and he bit back a grin at Ryan’s prompting. Mitch was just the seed of an idea, just the beginning. Chad was aware that the story had already spun out of his control. One of the unspoken rules of CNM was, like in prison movies, not to ask why someone was there. Some people volunteered the information, but the younger cohort usually avoided it; some, like Chad, were still working through the bitterness of recent failure, others battling bigger, more private demons.

He’d never told the story, and he wondered how Ryan told his, at family gatherings, to old friends, and new acquaintances. What excuse do you give for having one of greatest performance educations in the country, only to use it to teach little kids dance?

“Mitch wasn’t much of a Good Samaritan, but he was the first person to even suggest that there might some options other than re-applying to UNM,” Chad took a deep breath, the thought of UNM, the recollection of his hopeless feeling that it was his only chance, to go crawling back to the people who had already ruined his life once––it made his hands shake. “But Mitch talking about CNM made Julia open up. She’d been working at the Century since high school. She didn’t have the grades or the money to get into UNM, so she was doing a pre-nursing program at CNM and trying to get some of the Gen Ed requirements out of the way, and hoping to transfer to UNM after she finished her Associate’s. I’d thought she was a nurse the entire time we worked together, I had been seriously confused how she was working the two jobs.”

Ryan’s smile was back. His eyes soft when Chad caught them mid-self-depreciating laugh.

Chad was suddenly struck by deja vu. This was not the first time he and Ryan were sharing things they had long kept to themselves. Though their positions were reversed, Chad remembered how it felt in the locker rooms at Lava Springs half a lifetime ago, where Ryan told him about playing baseball; the thrill of motion and synchronicity, but how it paled next to the distillation of the two he found in dance. Chad remembered how Ryan had suddenly stopped seeming like a criminally wealthy, incomprehensible alien, to being just a boy, one who knew the same passion Chad had felt on more than one occasion. He stopped being  _ Evans _ , and for those six golden weeks at Lava Springs, he was  _ Ryan _ , dance instructor extraordinaire, and a surprisingly funny addition to their cohort. But the magic faded when they returned to school, Sharpay back in her usual commanding form, they traded pleasantries and smiles in the hallways, but they stayed apart; Ryan in the theater, Chad in the gymnasium.

The silence between them attenuated to the point of fracture, and Chad interrupted both his train of thought and his story.

“Do you want to go somewhere else? Maybe with better booze?”

The mounting tension in Ryan’s shoulders suddenly evaporated, and he cast a critical eye over his empty plastic glass, before tossing Chad another sly smile.

“I was hoping you would ask. The nicest thing one could say about this stuff,” he gave his cup a little shake, “is that it was drinkable.”

Chad laughed, bringing his own cup to his lips and tilting back his head to get the last little drop at the bottom. He made a show of licking his lips, “Mm, nearly flavorless, perfect.”

Ryan swept past the balloons out into the unflattering fluorescent light of the cafeteria. Chad tossed his cup into the trash can they passed, letting it arc neatly into the bin, pleased that even with the basketball career evaporated, some things remained.

Ryan didn’t look back as he wove his way between former classmates and the occasional spouse or significant other. Chad followed him a few steps behind. The blond cut through the crowd like a hot knife through butter, leaving Chad wondering how many people remembered him; if the ease was born of their classmates’ recollections of the unstoppable Evans twins, or if he moved through them unrecognized, made anonymous by the disappearance of both his hats and his sister. Chad nodded at a few people as they passed by, but didn’t stop to chat.

When they passed through the doors, with a nod and a wave to Millie, still sitting at the table with the name tags. She was looking down at the phone held in her lap, and Chad thought that, in the split second before she smiled at them as she looked up, that she looked forlorn, flanked on either side by balloons, lips slackened in something not quite a pout. But then her grin was in place and Chad returned it with a little wave and hurried after Ryan.

Their footsteps echoed in the empty hall, still overwhelming, but more familiar than the sound of his unaccompanied ones from earlier. Chad sped up for a moment, feeling his knee click in protest, until he was even with Ryan as he made for the front doors.

They hit the doors with a clang, pace not slowing, and the chilled springtime evening air of the desert was fresh on Chad’s cheeks. Ryan stopped at the top of the stairs, looking out at the parking lot and then tipping his head back with eyes closed, filling his lungs with a deep breath. Chad watched him, waiting until Ryan opened his eyes and looked over at him.

“Much better out here, it was somehow too quiet  _ and _ too crowded in there,” Ryan said.

“Where do you want to go?” Chad asked. He knew of a few places in Albuquerque worth stopping in, but most of them made him think of work, made familiar from the need for beer after a long shift of picking up candy wrappers and explaining student discount eligibility to ineligible 20-somethings.

“I know a place,” Ryan replied, his eyes dark, backlit as he was by the bright bulb over the high school doors. “Ride with me? I’ll bring you back to pick up your car after.”

Chad nodded and Ryan took the lead again, following the long line of cars to a silver, new model Volvo sedan. This Evans twin, it seemed, had lost his taste for the flair and style of their high school years. Though new, the V60 was all function. Chad found himself smiling as he pulled open the passenger seat door, and slid into the car.

“So what happened to the convertible?” Chad asked as Ryan ducked into the car.

Ryan cut him a look and then turned his eyes to the dashboard as he put the key in the ignition. He licked his lips, and kept his eyes focused ahead of them as the car rumbled to life. He didn’t look at Chad as he swung his right arm up against the back of the passenger seat, and turned to look around the back window. He reversed out of his spot and finally met Chad’s eyes again, as he brought the car to a stop, nose facing the parking lot exit, arm still behind the passenger seat.

He grinned, expression not quite reaching his eyes, and said, “Can’t drive cross country in a convertible and not pay for it.”

Chad nodded, as if he understood. There was more to the story, but tonight was Chad’s turn to prove himself by spilling his guts. Ryan could keep his secrets, for now.

They pulled out of the East Hgh parking lot and Chad watched Ryan drive. The radio had started playing when the car turned on, the guitars and funk bass line of 70s Rock and roll filtered out of the speakers to smooth the silence between them. He watched the way Ryan kept his eyes straight on the road, hands at 10 and 2, they got on the freeway, and Chad watched some of the tension bleed out of him, the way his fingers started tapping on the wheel in time with the music.

Chad let the calm of the freeway, the motion of the car lights through the car, lighting Ryan’s face and then leaving it in shadow, relax him back into the seat. He took a deep breath, and said, “I decided that I would take classes at CNM. I thought at first that my best bet was to get my Gen Eds out of the way, while I was working, keep a foot in the game, if you will. But I didn’t know what I wanted to study, and I knew I didn’t want to go back to UNM.”

Ryan looked over at that. His face was in shadow, but the curve of his cheek caught the red light of the car passing them on the left. Chad didn’t elaborate. He might be spilling his guts, but that didn’t mean he wanted to give up all his secrets tonight. The warm darkness of the car left him feeling pensive, he remembered the way it had felt good back then, just the two of them in the locker room, Ryan sharing parts of himself that Chad had never expected to find. That memory was colored the same was the summer was, honey sweet, blurry around the edges the way nostalgia always seemed to when the memories were painful, but the wounds themselves long healed.

“I started looking around, though. You don’t get to know people the same way you do when you all live on campus together. You see some people you know from high school, maybe someone for work, or the neighborhood, and maybe you make new friends in your classes or working on group projects. But none of that freshman flocking together crap,” Ryan let out a snort at that. Chad had been starting to wonder if art school was different from regular college, but Ryan’s amusement left him confident that teenagers away from home for the first time were the same no matter where they went or what they were studying.

“I got into some of the nutrition classes, and the physical therapy stuff,” this was the point in the story where Chad usually started when he was talking about what had happened. In the car, with Ryan Evans, he felt a twinge like maybe the things he was proud of weren’t enough. For the first time, it felt like the road he had left to travel was still long, a long while still to go before he could boast of his achievements.

“I’d had trouble with my weight while I was recovering. I was so used to having a teenage boy metabolism, coupled with running around like a maniac for four or five hours every day, that going from that to suddenly sitting on my ass all day was, uh,” he struggled for an adjective other than  _ horrible _ or  _ fattening,  _ and when he didn’t continue Ryan jumped in with a dry, “Less than ideal?” that startled a laugh out of Chad.

“Yeah, let's go with that,” Chad said, “Anyway, part of my physical therapy included some stuff on how to eat right. I’d heard some of it in health class and from Coach, but I’d never paid attention, never really felt like I needed it.”

Ryan hummed in agreement. Some things were foregone conclusions in your early twenties, like learning that all the stuff you thought you could skip, might actually be useful. Chad wondered what things Ryan had thought he could do without that it turned out he really needed.

“All this is to say that I started working towards the Associate’s in Nutrition. The program is meant to feed into the Bachelor’s at UNM, but––” Chad broke off and pulled a face. Ryan laughed one hand leaving the wheel to reach out and pat Chad on the thigh.

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Ryan’s teeth gleamed in the half light of the car, his smile wide and indecipherable.

Chad laughed, it wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t anything else either.

“Alright,” Ryan nodded. He seemed pleased. Something speculative crept into his voice as he caught Chad’s eye, sideways, and said, “Nutrition.”

They sat in a comfortable silence, Chad turning up the radio just a bit, tapping his fingers to the beat, as Ryan pulled them off the freeway. They’d passed Chad’s exit for the Century, not too long before. On the other side of the tangle of ramps and exits that marked the intersection of the 40 with the 25, they coasted down the ramp of exit 158 and Ryan took a left. Chad started to worry again that they’d end up in one of the shitty dives, or, maybe even worse, one of the more upscale places that he haunted sometimes, after work or class.

But Ryan hung another left, and they were on a quieter street Chad wasn’t familiar with, just outside of his usual circuit. They were amongst the big, low buildings that housed Albuquerque's construction and furnishing goods. Signs for glass, doors, and junk yards faded in and out of the dark. They passed a tattoo parlor and Ryan pulled into a half-filled parking lot, near another one of the big warehouse buildings.

Light spilled out of the big windows set into the building––old truck loading bays, Chad realized––and people sat at tables, a few of them clustered together off the raised seating area, beers in hand, cigarettes dangling from their fingers. Ryan pulled into a spot and got out of the car, Chad scrambled to quickly undo his seatbelt and follow him. The car chirped behind them as it locked, and walking towards the lights with the sound of people enjoying themselves washing over him, Chad noticed that there were some ten or fifteen bikes locked to the rail. There was a cluster of people in front of a food truck painted white and green with a sign reading “street food institute” on the side. It smelled of beer, hops, melting cheese, and frying. Chad looked over at Ryan, a little surprised at the homey feel of it, the unavoidable greasiness, and found him looking back, eyebrows raised, hopeful smile on his lips.

“Should have known you’d come back from New York a hipster,” Chad tossed him, with a smile, “I’m surprised we didn’t get all the way out here on a tandem bicycle.”

Ryan laughed.

“I left my tandem in New York, there was no way to fight it into my modest,  _ efficient _ vehicle.”

Chad stepped a little closer as they made their way for the door. The rolled up cuff of Ryan’s shirt brushed his arm, and he nudged the blond playfully, getting Ryan to look up, sharing a smile between them. The warm atmosphere inside the building matched the one outside, and magnified, Chad felt, the good feeling between the two of them. It wasn’t yet packed, with it not even being 8 o’clock yet, but the place was crowded. The sound of excited voices and early evening revelry, mixed with low ambient rock music enveloped them. Marquee lights that read “Tractor Brewing Co.” floated above the bar, and Ryan walked past the tables, liberally clustered with people, and pushed through the people taking up space at the bar.

Chad did his best to follow, but the huge room kept distracting him. The high warehouse ceiling gave the bar a roomy feeling, and the big windows kept it from feeling too much like a club or a rave. A projector was hooked up and playing a movie without sound on the back wall. It was in black and white, but not old. As he reached the spot Ryan had staked out to put their orders in, he realized they were showing  _ Clerks _ , even though no one seemed to be actually watching it. There was a little stage set up in front of the projection wall, and there were some speakers and a stand. Chad figured they would have a DJ on as the evening progressed, and idly wondered what kind of music they would be subjected to.

“What do you want?” Ryan asked, pitching his voice to be heard over the sound of laughter and conversation.

Chad looked at Ryan, who pointed towards the wall behind the bar, where a bunch of taps were lined up, and a chalkboard menu greeted Chad with an overabundance of information.

“Oh god,” Chad laughed, “What’s good?”

“It’s all good,” Ryan said.

Ryan waved a little towards the far end of the bar, and the bartender––a skinny guy with messy brown hair, stubble, and a prominent adam’s apple in a thin t-shirt and low riding jeans––made his way over to them.

“What’ll you guys be having tonight?” he asked, looking between them.

Chad swallowed, still unsure and overwhelmed by the number of options. Ryan cut through his thoughts with a confident, “We’ll have a  _ Hay Honey Maker Wheat _ and a  _ Milk Mustachio Stout. _ ”

The bartender nodded, and grabbed two glasses to go pull the pints.

Chad looked at Ryan with one eyebrow raised, Ryan just leaned in to him and said, “Try them both, pick whichever one you like best.”

Chad figured he’d let it slide. The bartender came back with the two glasses, one dark and frothy, and the other light and foamy, Ryan handed over his card and told the bartender to keep it open. Chad picked up the two glasses, and turned around to head back out. While the indoor spaces was nice, he wanted to enjoy the slow warming of the desert nights, not having to yell to talk to each other would be a nice bonus.

Ryan followed behind him, and held the door open with an extended arm so Chad could pass through with a minimum of spillage. He walked them to an open table, up against the wall of the building and almost too close to the food truck, which put just enough space between them and the next occupied table to feel like they weren’t joining the party. Chad put the beers down, perpendicular to the wall, and he and Ryan sat down on either side of the table. He looked out at the parking lot, enjoying the freedom to stretch out his legs, and breathe almost fresh air. Ryan brought him back with an impatient noise.

“Come on, try a beer. I want to know what you think,” he said as he nudged one of Chad’s feet with one of his own.  

Chad picked up the Honey Maker first, it was light and bubbly, the pale liquid was sharp where it nipped at his tastebuds, with the unmistakable flowery sweet taste of honey, overnotes of pollen soaked summer, and it faded leaving a sharp hops bitterness on the back of his tongue. Unmistakable, but not entirely to his taste. He pushed it towards Ryan and grabbed the stout. The beer was dark, dark, dark, gleaming almost black in the balcony bar light. The head was fluffy and inviting, and he felt it collect on his upper lip as he took a hefty sip. This one was smooth all the way through, the dark notes of chocolate and coffee rolled over each other as he let the ever-so-slightly sweet flavor soak into his palate. It was a beer more suited to late autumn than early spring, but the chill in the air made the full flavor inviting. He rolled his lips in, trying to get the remains of the beer foam off his top lip, and shot Ryan a smile. Pulling the glass towards him he said, “I’ll keep this one. Next time we’ll swap.”

As they settled in with their respective glasses, Ryan took his turn looking out at the parking lot, the mess of people and food and cars in front of them, while Chad looked at him. His skin was pale, even under the warm yellow light of the incandescent bulbs that lined the edge of the building. He took in the pensive set of his brows and his mouth, and though he was no less striking, or, if Chad was honest with himself, good looking, than he remembered him, there was a marked difference in his posture and expression. Some of the flamboyance and the  _ sparkle _ were gone, replaced by a dancer’s posture, and a hint of melancholy. The latter, Chad thought, had always been there, he remembered it from their summer at Lava Springs, but it had hidden behind Sharpay’s dazzle, and Ryan’s careful constructed persona of enthusiastic co-conspirator. The person sitting across from him was no longer at boy, is really what it boiled down to. Chad was sitting across from a man, one whom he felt close to, despite the years of silence and separation that had let them grow up into the two people sitting at the table now.

“I don’t want to teach dance for the rest of my life,” Ryan said. His gaze had faded into the thousand yard stare that Chad knew to associate with confessions.

“Do you want to go back to the stage?” Chad asked, he kept his voice soft, but pitched to carry across the table, hesitant to break the moment.

Ryan looked up at him. His brow pulled down, tongue and teeth worrying his lower lip.

“I know the answer everyone expects is yes,” he said, “I know that if I don’t go back, I’m spitting in the face of all the things Sharpay has ever wanted, but hasn’t been able to have.”

Chad felt a stab of something in his chest at that. He didn’t have any siblings, and didn’t feel like he owed anyone, except his mother, the satisfaction of doing some particular thing. Well, before his knee, he’d thought he owed Coach, and Troy, and all the people watching him the satisfaction of playing for the NBA. But he’d had time to get used to the feeling of letting go of the dreams other people held for you. He still didn’t have the words to tell his mother how much it meant to him that she’d never said anything about the sudden death of his basketball career. She’d focused on making sure he walked again, and let him mourn and move on in peace.

“But I don’t want to go,” Ryan continued, looking Chad in the eyes, “I’m tired of––all of it. Not just the grind of auditions, and rehearsal. Not that you spend so much time dancing other people’s stuff and not choreographing, but it just–– It feels empty. I thought when I got there, it would feel like being on top of the world, but it just feels like a job. At least when I’m working with the kids, even if they can be awful, and it’s never going to pay as well as I could probably get, joining with the right company, at least it feels like I’m  _ doing _ something. It’s a job, but it’s not a job. You know?”

Chad knew about jobs and Jobs. The Century was a job. The feeling he sometimes got, when he could manage to give someone advice, or realized how the things he was learning about in class made sense in the world––in his life or in his mother’s life or at his job––that felt more like a Job.

“I think I do,” Chad said. It came out quieter than he meant it to, but Ryan heard it, a smile that didn’t quite manage to kill the tension at the corner of his eyes sneaking onto his face. “With the kids you get to do something for someone else. Even if you aren’t teaching them to read or, you know, saving lives. You––” he paused, searching for the word of the feeling on the tip of his tongue, “You’re changing  _ their _ lives, just a little bit.”

Ryan nodded in agreement. He reached for his beer and took a hearty sip. Chad watched him, and then grabbed his own beer, looking back out to the parking lot, where he could see Ryan’s car, letting the flavor and aroma overtake his senses.

“A good show does that, too,” Ryan said, after a moment.

“But not every time, right?” Chad countered.

“But not every time.”

They said nothing more for a little while. Chad let the weight of the silence, tonight’s confessions, settle. It seemed impossible that the person Chad could speak this candidly with, the person he could know so well, without knowing him at all, was Ryan Evans. Nearly two decades of friendship with Troy Bolton, and Chad could neither tell him about the sick feeling UNM left in his gut, nor could he pull words for him out of thin air. He could hear Troy’s voice in his head, he could always know what his advice would be, but—and sometimes it felt like it all came back to that one New Year’s Eve they spent apart, to Gabriella’s arrival in their lives—he couldn’t always understand him or make himself understood. As if Ryan could read his thoughts, his next question was, “Where’s Troy?”

Chad laughed, because of the non-sequitur and because the alignment of the question and his thoughts felt too perfect to be real.

“What?” Ryan asked, aiming for affronted and landing somewhere closer to baffled, “We’ve spent a whole evening together, some of it  _ at East High _ , and your golden boy best friend is nowhere to be found! It’s a totally reasonable question!”

“Nothing, it’s not you,” Chad answered, still laughing, “I was just thinking about him, and you asked about him. I was wondering if he was going to walk up next, out of the blue.”

“Is it likely?”

“No,” Chad shook his head, “He’s somewhere out in Colorado, hiking on the mountains. Maybe working as a guide? I don’t really know. He posts stuff online, but we haven’t managed to find time to call, and he hasn’t been back. Last time was, damn, probably the fall after he finished out at Berkley.”

Ryan nodded.

“He and Gabriella still together?”

Chad let out a single  _ HA _ , “No. No they are not.”

Ryan took a sip of his beer and raised his eyebrows, expectant.

“No. They made it through freshman year okay, and I sort of thought they might be okay, you know. What with her not dumping him at Thanksgiving. But she dumped him Christmas of junior year. It was rough. Kinda fucked up the end of his college career. Because suddenly he actually had to think about what he was going to do after all of it was over. He’d ended up at Berkeley for himself, sort of. But he had basically followed Gabby out there, and I’m pretty sure what planning to follow her wherever she went next.”

Ryan’s sharp, unhappy smile from earlier in the evening made a reappearance. Chad wondered if the parallels between Troy and Gabby and Ryan and Sharpay were really as easy as Ryan seemed to make them.

“So he decided to become a mountain man,” Chad finished, “Which is, I’m pretty sure, just 23-year-old speak for ‘Don’t make me grow up yet’.”

That got a more genuine smile out of Ryan, and Chad wished he had a better way to banish the spectres of both Troy and Sharpay from their little table.

“I’ve been doing some of the classes for the Community Health Worker Certificate,” Chad blurted.

“What?”

“I just–– Troy’s an idiot. I know you’re in New York to be close to Sharpay and I can see you making all kinds of stupid comparisons between you and her, and Troy and Gabby, and it’s not true. It’s not fair. To you. She’s your sister, and you love her and you’re stuck with her even if she hates you for the rest of forever. Troy’s just not that great at thinking for himself, a lot of the time. I’m really hoping that getting lost on a mountain in Colorado helps him be better at it. You went to Juilliard because you earned it, even knowing it would make Sharpay upset, and even though you think people want you to go on to Broadway or whatever, you’re teaching kids how to dance. That’s. That’s a lot, and it’s way better than the fit Troy is throwing.”

Chad snapped his mouth shut. He quickly took a gulp of his beer, a bigger mouthful than he intended, and dripped beer down his chin, and onto his pants.

Ryan just stared at him, one hand loosely held around his beer glass. He brought his other hand up, and rubbed his chin.

“Sorry,” Chad said, after he swallowed his mouthful and a half of beer, and it became obvious that Ryan wasn’t going to say anything. “I just think what you’re doing is really admirable.”

That cracked through Ryan’s surprise, and he smiled, lips still together, but reaching all the way up to his eyes. He leaned in, across the table, pulling his beer to one side, resting his chin on his hand, elbow a third of the way across.

“So, Chad,” and Chad gulped at the tone, it was warm and syrup-sweet, a clear shift from where they’d been a moment ago, “You work at a movie theater, you go to school for nutrition, you  _ don’t _ call your childhood best friend, and you  _ don’t  _ play basketball. What else is different? I know you and Taylor broke things off in high school. But there have to have been other girls since then. You seeing anyone?”

The tone was, for a lack of a better word, flirtatious, but the expression on Ryan’s face was teasing. Chad knew a few things about Ryan. They’d all known a few things about Ryan in high school, no matter how close he was with Kelsey, or that he took her to prom (and a few people said they knew things about Kelsey, too, but Chad had never been sure, and didn’t want to presume). There had been girls since Taylor, of course there had, there had been girls before Taylor, too. Taylor was someone else Chad hadn’t talked to since leaving East High, though he thought about her, from time to time, when working on his chemistry assignments, or biology prep. He wonders if she’d be at all impressed with him. He likes to think she would be. Maybe she might even find him interesting again.

But Chad had found out a few things about himself, though he’d never told anyone, that summer at Lava Springs. Time away from Troy, and, if he was honest, time with Ryan, had showed him that there were a few different kinds of friends, different friendships, different bonds. Troy had always been the ultimate; the greatest partner in crime, the best and closest friend he had, a man he loved, but like a brother. When Troy turned his back on them, out of thoughtlessness, not even real malice, it had broken Chad’s heart. The cloud of that heartbreak still cast a pall over his memories of Lava Springs. But that summer also had Ryan. And Ryan was a whole different animal. Ryan was unexpected, he was a force of nature, he pushed Chad to try new things, to remember that everyone can be more than meets the eye. He knows that the unspoken knowledge about Ryan must have helped him see it, but Ryan, or more specifically, the way Chad  _ felt _ about Ryan was not even a distant cousin to what he felt for Troy.

So yes, there had been girls since Taylor. But after his knee, after all of the things he’d thought he knew about himself, after the person he had been was shattered along with his plans, there had been boys, too. He was pretty sure his mother knew, from the times he’d left to go out with a “friend” and come back late, faded marks of hickies and beard burn in the morning. But he hadn’t told her. Hadn’t told Troy, not even when they got drunk under the basketball hoop still up next to the Bolton’s house, after Gabby dumped him. He’d been nervous that his haunts around the Century, near the CNM buildings might put one of his new “friends” in their path, that Ryan would take them downtown, past Lomas, maybe even to Effex, even though he  _ knew _ they didn’t open until nine.

Chad ran a finger around the rim of his glass, staring down into the foam gathered at the top.

“Yeah,” he said, licked his lips and took a deep breath, “But not only girls. How about you? Girls? Boys?”

He pulled his eyes up, as he asked. Caught the way Ryan’s cheeks flushed with his confession. The space between his lips, where Chad could hear the air rushing in. It felt good. It felt right to know that it was a surprise, if not a shock, that it was a real secret. But it felt like moving after having held one position too long, tension he’d forgotten he was carrying unwound and he could breathe deeply for the first time.

“Mm,” Ryan said, flush still riding his cheekbones, suspended halfway between leaning closer and sitting back, recovering his playful tone, “There are always boys.”

He smirked at Chad, who could feel his heart pick up speed in his chest. Of course there were boys, Ryan was in New York, looking the way he did, at  _ performance school _ .

“Any particular boy?” Chad ventured, feeling bold. His arms and feet were tingling, adrenaline tight in his blood vessels. It always felt this way, in bars and clubs, or with a cute customer at the Century register, like he was running full speed ahead about to throw himself off a precipice, dangerous and exhilarating. Flirting with girls was easy, a look, a touch, a tone, and he could read her. Boys were enigmas, a push-pull of desire and admiration, familiar and remote.

Ryan was like a song he hadn’t heard on the radio for a long time. A sudden surprise, but completed by instant recognition.

“No,” Ryan said, voice earnest, eyes unwavering where they caught Chad’s, “No there isn’t any particular boy.”

He left a silence like he might continue, but didn’t. Chad wanted something to fit there. An exception, an acknowledgement that they were here, in the chilly spring evening, alone. The silence, the implicit provocation, inaction would let the moment pass them by, and they would continue, just as they were. But, Chad realized, didn’t want that.

“So are you in habit of taking all your old friends out for drinks after five years with no word? Shouldn’t there be more of us here?”

Ryan’s eyes gleamed in the warm light coming off the building, the color in his cheeks unmistakeable, now. Chad held his chin up, defiant, gauntlet thrown. But he leaned in, eyes not leaving Ryan’s face--the way his lips were parted, the quickened movement of his chest in his peripheral vision, the inescapable draw of his blue, blue eyes.

“No, not in the habit of that, either,” Ryan’s voice was quiet and rough with something Chad could only hope was anticipation. “No, you’re something else altogether Chad Danforth. Always have been.”

His mouth curled into a warm smile at the last pronouncement. The sixteen year old boy that lived in Chad’s heart, who had never given up hope, who had never tried to forget that summer at Lava Springs, was suffused with elation.

Chad smiled back. 

**Author's Note:**

> i lied. i totally wrote it because my own reunion is coming up. i just don't have any fantastic unresolved sexual tension with individuals i haven't spoken with in years. (thankfully, i think.) 
> 
> i have half an idea for what their 10 year reunion would look like, but i don't think i'll force that on the internet unless someone asks. 
> 
> the places mentioned in this story are real, i have not visited any of them, because i have never been to New Mexico. i did extensive Google Maps studies, and a significant amount of research into the course offerings, programs, and credit transfer options at CNM. i don't know if UNM treats their injured student athletes terribly, but it is a nod to some of the controversies currently unfolding in the arena of college sports, especially college basketball. 
> 
> i have drunk beers, but not the ones i mention, because though they exist, they are not sold outside of NM, if someone would be interested in getting me some, let me know. 
> 
> i have never worked in a movie theater, although i have worked in a mall that contains a movie theatre, nevertheless i apologize if i have grossly misrepresented the actual experiences, work ethics, hiring practices, and/or lifestyle choices of people who do work those positions.


End file.
